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It is our intention that just and sure punishment shall be meted 
out to the ringleaders responsible for the organized murder of 
thousands of innocent persons and the commission of atrocities 
which have violated every tenet of the Christian faith. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt. 


OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION 
Washington^ D. C. 





A city falls to the Nazis. Conquering 
troops goose-step through the streets, 
swastikas fly from public buildings. 
Bands play merry German waltzes in the 
park. “The grateful populace,” reads 
the official lie from Berlin, “welcomed 
their German liberators with open 
arms!” Then silence, the silence of the 
tomb. 

Behind that wall of silence the “New 
Order” begins its deadly work. Men be¬ 
come slaves, a slice of bread becomes a 
precious jewel. Into the city stream the 


executioners of the “New Order”—the 
economic advisers with their charts of 
strangulation, the Gestapo with their 
blueprints of death. Many of their 
moves are bloodless, many bloodv, but 
each is a deliberate step toward the Nazi 
goal: the enslavement of the human 
race. 

Warsaw's fate is the ultimate fate of 
Paris, Oslo, and Rotterdam, of Belgrade 
and Brussels, of every village, city, and 
nation that falls to the Nazis. Poland 
has been the testing ground for the Nazi 


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^^Each scene was being carefully recorded by newsreel cameras.^’ 





















plans of world domination. Every na¬ 
tion occupied by the Nazis has been sub¬ 
ject to an inexorable pattern: no matter 
how mild the occupation seemed at the 
start, conditions slowly and surely have 
approached those prevailing in Warsaw. 
On the day the Nazis seized Oslo, in Nor- 
way, posters announced that the occupa¬ 
tion was merely “protective” and “tem¬ 
porary.” In those days the Nazis said 
the Norwegians were blood-brothers of 
the same racial strain. Today the mask 
has been dropped. Blood runs in the 
streets of Oslo. The people are without 
adequate clothing or food, their every 
liberty has been destroyed, their property 
stolen. Only by degrees does Oslo differ 
from Warsaw. 

When Nazi soldiers entered Paris, they 
smiled at the people, behaved with per¬ 
fect manners, patted the children, and 
helped elderly ladies across streets. 
“Abandoned families!” said the posters, 
“put your trust in the German soldiers.” 

Frenchmen were told that only the Ger- 

✓ 

mans could restore them to greatness as 
a nation. Paris today is a silent city. 
The propaganda posters are gone. In 
their place are grim black-bordered lists 
of executed Frenchmen. The Nazis 
have plundered Paris, paying for what 
they took in worthless promissory notes. 
All of France staggers under an “occu¬ 
pation costs” load of $7,500,000 each 
day. The people of Paris are on the 
verge of starvation. Daily men are 
hunted, shot as hostages, or shipped into 
the Reich to manufacture weapons of 
war. 


But Warsaw reveals best the cold, cal¬ 
culated design of life and death under 
the Nazis. From Warsaw have come 
the most detailed accounts of the “New 
Order” in all its planned fury. Warsaw, 
too, like every city and village under the 
lash of the Nazis, resists the tyranny with 
all its strength. 

The story of Warsaw is the story of 

4 ^ 

Poland, Norway, and France, of Czecho¬ 
slovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, of Holland, 
Belgium, Denmark, and Luxembourg. 
It is a deadly warning to all men still 

blessed with freedom. 

• • • 

Warsaw resisted the heavy artillery 
guns and dive bombers of the Nazis for 
twenty-one days. On the twenty-second 
day—its water supply gone, its dead still 
lying in the streets—the city surrendered. 
There was food for three more days, mu¬ 
nitions for one. Their spirit unbroken, 
men and women emerged from cellars 
and the ruins of bombed buildings, from 
behind barricades and antitank traps 
hastily erected in the streets. During the 
siege some fifty thousand persons had 
been killed, one hundred thousand 

4 

wounded. Half the city’s buildings had 
been either completely demolished or 
severely damaged. Only the bare walls 
of the Royal Castle still stood. Gone 
was the Ministry of War, the Lutheran 
Church, the Stock Exchange. Damaged 
almost beyond recognition were the 
Opera House, Warsaw University, the 
Church of St. Mary Blessed Virgin. 
Strafing the city from tree-top level, 
Nazi planes had concentrated (when not 



machine-gunning unarmed civilians) on 
destroying these monuments to Polish 
culture. Carcasses of horses were piled 
high against the curbs. Homeless thou¬ 
sands wandered the streets. Desolation 
flowed through the city in colors of blood. 
Less than a month before, on the morn¬ 
ing the first bomb had been dropped on 
Warsaw, Hitler had screamed to the 
Reichstag: “I have no desire to wage 
war against women and children.” 

Residents of Warsaw were given three 
days to clear the streets of rubble and 
bodies, and on October 1, 1939, German 
troops marched into the city. As reward 
for their victory. General von Brauchitsch 
granted twenty-four hours of freedom in 
which to loot suburban houses. Told to 
loot, they looted. Otherwise, they main-, 
tained complete discipline. German 
Army trucks, loaded with loaves of 
bread, were stationed at several promi¬ 
nent intersections. Poles who stood in 
line to receive the bread noticed that 
each scene was being carefully recorded 
by newsreel cameras. “A more pleading 
expression,” urged the cameramen. Dis¬ 
gusted, many Poles turned away. Pic¬ 
tures of this dole were later shown in 
German theatres, captioned: “German 
soldiers sharing food with their erstwhile 
enemies.” In other parts of the city dur¬ 
ing the first three days 300,000 helpings 
of thin soup and black bread were passed 
out to the accompaniment of German 
bands playing waltzes. 

The music soon ended. The pattern 
of occupation became clear. The city 
was billed 300,000 zlotys ($60,000) for 


the soup and bread of the first three days. 
Lazienki Park, oldest and largest in War¬ 
saw, was closed to Poles. Blasted from 
its pedestal," Chopin’s monument was 
melted down and sent to Hitler as a gift 
from his troops. Scientific laboratories 
that had escaped destruction during the 
siege were dismantled, and their equip¬ 
ment shipped to Germany. More than 
100,000 books in the Central Military 
Library were burned, as the invaders 
honeycombed every library in the city, 
removing all books by “non-Aryan” au¬ 
thors and all volumes dealing with Polish- 
German relations. Warsaw museums 
were scientifically robbed of their treas¬ 
ures, lists having been drawn up in ad¬ 
vance by Nazi tourists who had noted the 
choicest collections. Poles were forbid¬ 
den to travel by train in first- or second- 
class cars. Jews were barred entirely 
from trains. Front sections of street¬ 
cars were reserved for Germans. The 
Polish press was suspended. Hotels in 
Warsaw were closed to Poles, as were the 
waiting rooms of railroad stations. Pil- 
sudski Square was rechristened Adolf 
Hitler Platz. One hundred and nineteen 
members of the Warsaw Bar Association 
were thrown into jail, including the 
Association’s eighty-year-old President. 
None but Germans were permitted on 
the streets from 8 p. m. to 5 a. m. 
Violators of the curfew were shot on 
sight. 

Warsaw belongs to what is known as 
the Government General, presided over 
by Governor General Hans Frank, a Nazi 
for many years, who has said: “The Gov- 



”Blasted from its pedestal, Chopin’s monument was melted doivn 


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Every cotv, chicken, and hog is registered, ” 









eminent General represents the best ex¬ 
ample of the system that will be intro¬ 
duced in the countries of New Europe 
controlled by Greater Germany.” At 
the beginning of the occupation, the Ger¬ 
mans spoke of the Government General 
as being merely under German influence, 
distinct from areas to the west of War¬ 
saw, which were made part of Germany 
itself and where the policy of extermina¬ 
tion has been even more ruthless than in 
W arsaw. Dropping all pretense after 
the fall of France. Frank declared; 
‘‘Henceforth the Government General 
will not be looked upon as occupied 
territory, but as an integral part of the 
Greater German power space.” Warsaw 
is really ruled by the Gestapo, a law unto 
itself. Fully equipped with the tools 
of its trade—rifles, steel helmets, whips, 
machine guns, tanks, and antitank guns— 
the Gestapo set up shop in a former min- 
istrv on Szucha Avenue. The street itself 
was renamed Polizei (Police) Street. 
Once the Gestapo became settled in War¬ 
saw, with some one thousand officers 
and five thousand troops, no man's life 
could be called his own. The invaders 
passed a series of legal decrees authoriz¬ 
ing themselves to steal all Polish prop¬ 
erty. For weeks on end the covered 
trucks of the Gestapo rumbled out of 
Warsaw, headed for Germany and laden 
with furniture, rugs, jewels, furs, paint¬ 
ings, household equipment, all manner 
and description of Polish personal prop¬ 
erty, all seized without payment. 

All universities and high schools were 
closed. Some primary schools now stay 


open a few hours daily, their classrooms 
unheated unless the children can find 
scraps of wood or coal. They rarely can. 
No history, geography, or Polish litera¬ 
ture may be taught; teaching of German 
is prohibited, too, as the Master Race 
does not consider the Poles qualified to 
speak its language. The curriculum con¬ 
sists simply of elementary arithmetic, 
writing, and reading. No new textbooks 
may be published and most old ones have 
been confiscated. Nonetheless, the flame 
of Polish culture is being kept ali\'e in 
darkened rooms all over Warsaw, where 
groups of children are being secretly 
taught the language and traditions of 
their country. Germans do not object 
to their Polish slaves becoming car¬ 
penters or locksmiths, and some elemen¬ 
tary trade schools are still open. Sys¬ 
tematically destroying the intellectual 
classes, the Ciermans forbid teachers, 
writers, artists, musicians, and actors to 
practice their professions. Many have 
taken to waiting on tables, repairing 
broken windows, clearing away debris, 
or operating rickshas—tricycles with 
seats in front of the handlebars, the com¬ 
mon method of travel in Warsaw today. 
Others sell their books and furniture on 
the streets or perform in the numerous 
coffee shops that have sprung up 
throughout the city. Although these 
shops sell little food, they have becom(‘ 
the last refuge of the Poles, the onl\ 
places where they can meet, stay warm, 
and talk. 

“In stilling the pangs of hunger.“ 
Reichsmarshal Goering has said, ‘'the 








10 


^^Eiphty percent have been without sujfficient light or heat . 


?5 











' Germans come first.” Poles in w arsaw 
are barely being kept alive, alive just 
enough, in some cases, to turn out goods 
for the German war machine. Bread is 
about the only thing the Poles can count 
upon eating; they have been permitted 
less than five slices a dav. This winter 
there may be no bread for Poles in War¬ 
saw. Forty percent sawdust, the bread 
is dark and indigestible. Many families 
.are subsisting on a thin potato soup, with¬ 
out meat and containing a few cabbage 
leaves and beets. Food cards theoreti¬ 
cally entitle the Poles each week to slightly 
more than three ounces of meat (the 
equivalent in the United States, say, of 
one thin chop) ; each month to three and 
a half ounces of flour and sugar, four 
and a half ounces of marmalade, and one 
egg. Thev rarelv receive these. Meat, 
when sold, is malodorous and mostly 
bone. No provision is made on the food 
cards for butter, cheese, or green vege¬ 
tables. Adults mav not receive milk, 
an adult being anybody older than six 
months. 

There is food enough in and around 
Warsaw, but it either goes to Germans on 
the spot, is shipped into the Reich, or sent 
to feed German troops on the war fronts. 
“We are today in a fortunate situation,” 
Goering told the German people on Oc¬ 
tober 4, 1942, “where the entire German 
Wehrmacht, no matter on what front it 
stands, is supplied solely from the con¬ 
quered territories.” Food production of 
farmers in the Government General is 
strictly regulated. Every cow, chicken, 
and hog is registered. Villages are held 


collectively responsible for each farmer 
producing the amount required by the 
Germans. Using food as a weapon to 
demoralize the population, the Germans 
periodically create artificial shortages, 
particularly after some outbreak against 
the Nazis. At such times, no food what- 
ev’er reaches the city. Guards stand at all 
entrances and search all tra\Tlers. Milk 
cans are wastefully punctured and eggs 
smashed, presumably as a sign of German 
power. Even if they recei\'ed all the food 
allowed under rationing, Poles would not 
subsist for long. The Nazis have planned 
it that way. In the first half of 1941. 
8,000 persons were born in Warsaw, but 

21.800 died. In the first half of 1939, be¬ 
fore the “New Order,” there had been 

10.800 births, compared with 7,300 
deaths. Warsaw today is dying out. 
Deprived of the necessary fats and vita¬ 
mins, the population falls easv prey to 
disease. Hunger has made the people of 
Warsaw feel tired all the time. The 
slightest exertion—mental or physical— 
causes extreme fatigue. Children are 
malformed and ghostlike, suffering from 
anemia and softehing of the bones. 
Adults lose weight; the functioning of 
their vital organs is impaired by malnu¬ 
trition. Exhaustion, hunger, and cold 
have forced many people to stay perma¬ 
nently in bed. In 1941, 9,000 persons 
died of tuberculosis in the city, compared 
with less than 3,000 in 1938. In the first 
eight months of 1941, typhus took a toll 
of 5,592 persons, compared to 23 in 1938. 

In order to live, residents of ^Varsaw 
must seek food on the Black Markets, 


11 



which exist everywhere. There is little 
doubt that the Germans, at a fat profit, 
have a hand in operating them. But few 
persons can afford Black Market prices. 
An egg costs 60 cents, a pound of pork 
around $4, a pound of butter between $9 
and $11; coffee, rarely obtainable, costs 
anyw^here from $48 to $80 a pound. 
Thousands of “meals” are served daily 
to the needy by mutual aid societies, one 
member of a family standing in line for 
the rest and taking soup home in a pail. 
Every Polish family in Warsaw today 
shares its food with others. 

“I am not interested in heating the 
homes of these swine—the Poles,” said 
the German Coal Commission in Au¬ 
gust 1941. “Let them die.” Warsaw 
in winter has an average temperature of 
five below zero (F) ; it sometimes drops 
to twenty below. During the winter of 
1940~41 Germans allowed the Poles one 
bucketful of coal every six or eight weeks. 
Coal this winter will be available only on 
the Black Market, where a half ton costs 
in the neighborhood of $160. At the 
beginning of the occupation, Nazis seized 
all apartment houses and offices in War¬ 
saw with steam heat. Into these build¬ 
ings, and these buildings alone, now goes 
the coal from the abundant mines of 
Upper Silesia. For firewood, Poles have 
cut down small trees and destroyed fences 
on the outskirts of Warsaw; most of the 
larger trees in the parks have been 
stripped of bark. 

Gas pressure is so low that it takes 
several hours to warm a quart of water. 
Without warning, sections of the city 


are completely deprived of electricity, 
often for two or three months at a 
time. On certain days, all electric cur¬ 
rent is cut off except from 8 to 10 p. m. 
Even without these restrictions, Warsaw 
would be in darkness when the sun is 
down, since the vast majority of persons 
cannot pay the enormous electricity 
charges. Eighty percent of the people 
hav^e been without sufficient light or heat 
since the occupation. 

Germans seized all war industries in 
Warsaw, putting the larger ones to work 
without delay, and taking a little time to 
fit the smaller ones into their war ma¬ 
chine. Nazis have a passion for legaliz¬ 
ing their robberies. While stealing a 
business, they carry on a vast amount of 
complicated paper work: changes in 
ownership, sale transactions, trusteeships, 
and many other “legal” forms. At the 
end of this abracadabra the former 
Polish owner—no matter how many 
sealed documents he may possess—has 
been robbed of his business. German 
Treuhander (trustees) are installed. 
Sticking their noses into every nook and 
cranny of the business, bossing the for¬ 
mer boss and his workers, the Treu¬ 
hander have complete control, plus a 
fancy salary. Many small plants of no 
use to the war machine have been closed, 
either forcibly or from lack of raw mate- 
rials and funds. Others keep open as long 
as possible, to spare their workers from 
being registered as unemployed and sub¬ 
ject to deportation to Germany. 

Warsaw’s working class is poverty- 
stricken. The cost of living has risen 


12 






Despite the Nazi tyranny^ Warsaw's churches are filled to bursting . . . 


13 






























more than 1,100 percent, while wages 
(with the exception of those paid some 
unskilled laborers) have dropped below 
the minimums set by pre-war contracts. 
Building-trades workers are unemployed, 
as there is no new construction in this 
city of ruins. White-collar earnings have 
been decreased; regardless of previous 
earnings, office workers can receiv’e no 
more than $15 weekly. The average 
stenographer earns $7.50 weekly, the 
average waitress $3. Inasmuch as one 
room and a kitchen rent for at least $30 
a month, residents of W^arsaw are living 
six and eight to a room. 

Thousands of Poles in Warsaw have 
been expelled from their homes on three 
davs’ notice, and been mov'ed to other 
parts of the city. Today Germans com¬ 
pletely occupy the best residential sec¬ 
tions. Polish Jews were given three to 
six hours to pack and get into the Ghetto, 
taking along only such bedding and 
clothing as they could carry. Warsaw's 
housing problem is desperate, not only 
as a result of the property destruction but 
because a half million of those Poles 
dri\ en from their homes in the Western 
part of the country have been sent into 
the ov’ercrowded city, to await shipment 
into Germanv as slave labor. To the 

4 

Nazis, Polish manpower swims in a 
large and nameless lake, the priv’ate 
property of the Reich. Whenever they 
move Germans from bombed areas into 
stolen lands, or need men to make more 
weapons or to work German farms 
(while the German farmer is off using 
the weapons), the planners of the Reich 


cast a large net into the nameless lake 
and pull out a few thousand or hundred 
thousand or million Poles. From all of 
Poland, nearly half a million prisoners of 
war are now bending their backs in Ger¬ 
manv; another million Poles have been 
uprooted from their homes in the West 
and shipped like cattle to the East; an¬ 
other million have been sent to labor 
camps in occupied Russian territory; an¬ 
other million and a half have been 
dragged into the Reich as farm and in¬ 
dustrial slaves. 

A typical cast of the Nazi net took 
place in Kercelak market place, War¬ 
saw, one morning in Mav 1942. In the 
old days, before the Nazis, Kercelak mar¬ 
ket place had been a flamboyant and col¬ 
orful bazaar, its food booths piled high 
with meats, cheese, fruits, and vegetables 
from the countryside. On this May 
morning a heavy sadness hung over the 
market. Most of the booths were closed. 
A few rickety ones were still open, their 
sallow proprietors offering wooden shoes 
for sale, or a pair of pants. Several 
thousand men and women milled about, 
carrying old and tattered bits of clothing 
over their arms, hoping to exchange' 
them for scraps of food. Into the square 
goose-stepped a detachment of German 
soldiers, lustily singing. People paid 
scant attention to them; the Germans are 
forever marching and, besides, these sol¬ 
diers were singing. When the detach¬ 
ment reached the center of the square it 
suddenly broke ranks, small groups 
making for every exit. From nowhere 
appeared the vans and lorries of the Ges- 


14 



5 ? 


^^Carts went through the streets to pick up the dead left lying there 


15 



































tapo. Machine guns were trained on the 
crowd. ^‘Achtuno!^^ came the shouted 
command through a megaphone. 
“Stand where you are or be shot.'’ The 
thousands in Kercelak market place froze 
in their tracks. Soon the square had been 
emptied, the thousands poured into the 
Gestapo vans and driven to a house on 
Skaryszewska Street for questioning. 
Heavy labor was separated from light 
and farm labor, young women from old. 
Some of the young girls were reserved for 
the exclusive use of the German army. 
Country girls were assigned to the troops, 
daughters of once-wealthy city folk were 
turned over to officers. By evening the 
catch was on its way into the darkness of 
the Reich, locked in freight cars. In all, 
the catch had netted 3,000 persons. 
Their families were not -notified. 

Persecuting the Catholic Church, the 
Nazis have forbidden Poles to celebrate 
the festivals of the Assumption and the 
Immaculate Conception. Large num¬ 
bers of prominent priests are in concen¬ 
tration camps, or have been tortured and 
put to death. Catholic organizations . 
have been forced to close their doors and 
end their activities. In a typical church 
raid, the Nazis swooped down upon the 
Capuchin Cloister on Miodowa Street, 
confiscated the property, and arrested the 
monks. In villages on the outskirts of 
Warsaw, priests are held as hostages 
when peasants fail to meet the grain 
quota demanded by the Nazis. Both 
Lutheran colleges in Warsaw have been 
seized and converted into military hospi¬ 
tals. Polish Protestant publications are 


forbidden, as are religious rites in Polish 
in the Protestant churches. No church 
was left undamaged in Warsaw during 
the siege. Many hav-e since managed to 
patch their roofs, but services are held 
todav in churches with wrecked altars 
and shattered walls. Despite the Nazi 
tvrannv—or, rather, because of it—War- 

4 * ' ' 

saw’s churches are filled to bursting at 
everv service. 

4 

In December 1942 the State Depart¬ 
ment, issuing a joint declaration by eleven 
of the United Nations, announced that 
reports from Europe indicated that Ger¬ 
man authorities “are now carrying into 
effect Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to 
exterminate the Jewish people in Europe 
... In Poland, which has been made 
the principal Nazi slaughterhouse, the 
ghettos established by the German in¬ 
vader are being systematically emptied 
of all Jews except a few highly skilled 
workers required for war industries. 
None of those taken away are .ever heard 
of again. The able-bodied are slowly 
worked to death in labor camps. The 
infirm are left to die of exposure and 
starvation or are deliberately massacred 
in mass executions.’’ 

Before the policy of total extermina¬ 
tion went into effect, more than half a 
million Jews were packed into the Ghetto, 
a dismal section of 100 blocks in the 
northern part of Warsaw, surrounded by 
an 8-foot wall topped by broken glass. 
No one could enter or leave without a 
pass. No streetcars ran between the 
Ghetto and other parts of the city. In¬ 
side the Ghetto, the Germans systemati- 


16 




cally created an escalator of death: when 
500 Jews died, 500 others immediately 
took their places, shipped into the Ghetto 
from various parts of Poland and Europe. 
During April, May, and June, 1941, 


10,232 Jews died in the Ghetto; only 
1,208 were born. The annual death rate 
in the Ghetto in 1941 was roughly 83 per 
thousand; the highest annual death rate 
of any modern city is less than 30 per 



^Returned to his parents with a small card pinned to his suit . . . ” 












thousand. Death from starvation was 
common, rations being little over half 
those allotted Poles outside the Ghetto. 
Furthermore, Ghetto rations were the 
first to be reduced. The Jewish Com¬ 
munity Council, operating within the 
Ghetto, did its best to feed thousands of • 
persons each day. Former warehouses 
■and loft buildings, without adequate sani¬ 
tary facilities, were turned into dwelling 
places, 30 to 40 persons living in one 
office “room.” There was only one hos¬ 
pital in the Ghetto, without linen and 
with few drugs. Carts went through the 
Ghetto streets at night to pick up the 
dead left lying there. 

Seeking food outside the Ghetto, bands 
of boys crept through holes in bombed 
buildings and emerged from cellars and 
excavations. Thev roamed the streets of 
Warsaw, begging. Jewish police within 
the Ghetto and Polish police outside its 
walls turned their backs on this activity. 
Germans maintained a bicycle guard 
around the Ghetto wall, constantly cir¬ 
cling in search of persons who had left 
without permission. Some months ago 
Nazi soldiers caught a small boy who 
was returning to the Ghetto with a bag 
of food. Lifting a manhole cover, they 
dropped the boy into a sewer. The Nazis 
were proud of the conditions they had 
created in the Ghetto; regular tours 
passed through its twisted, somber streets, 
the sightseers being Germans who had 
settled in Poland or been brought there 
from bombed areas in the Reich. Poles 
were often forced to take these tours, too, 
but they utilized them to make mental 


note of persons suffering worse than 
others. Later they threw small packages 
of food over the Ghetto wall near those 
spots. Mutual suffering bred bonds of 
brotherhood. 

There is no way of telling at this time 
exactly how many Poles have been mur¬ 
dered by the Nazis in Warsaw. At the 
beginning of the occupation, executions 
took place at 2 a. m. and 3:30 p. m. in 
the Sejm (lower House of the Polish 
Parliament) Gardens. More recently, 
the execution spot has been Palmiry, not 
far from Warsaw in the Kampinos For¬ 
est, where the shootings occur either at 
dawn or during the night, by the light of 
auto headlamps. Trenches — twenty 
yards long, two yards wide, two yards 
deep—are dug in advance by Jewish 
labor battalions, forced to perform this 
work. Twenty persons at a time are 
lined up along the trench edge and shot 

in the back of the head by firing squads. 
Isolated executions in Warsaw reveal the 
continuous pattern: on September 14, 
1940, two Poles, sought by three German 
policemen, escaped from a house in 
Lwowska Street amidst gunplay. A 
large force of German police soon ar¬ 
rived, arrested all inhabitants livdng in 
the house in question, and a number of 
men from neighboring buildings. In all, 
200 persons (180 men and 20 women) 
were taken to prison and later shot. The 
body of a sixteen-year-old boy who broke 
the 8 p. m. curfew was returned to his 
parents with a small card pinned to his 
suit. The card simply said: “8:15.” 
Often the Germans torture their intended 


18 





^^Nazis dare not travel alone in the streets 


19 



























victims by delaying the execution—as in 
the case of 31 persons, during January 
1940, who were led from their prison 
for two successive nights, told to dig 
graves, and then returned to prison. On 
the third night they were shot. 

Poland resists. Guerrilla bands repre¬ 
senting all classes of the Polish people 
have been operating since the occupa¬ 
tion. Working singly and in groups, 
well-organized, receiving aid and shelter 
from their fellow-Poles, they have given 
the Nazis a bloodv taste of their own 
medicine.' They' dynamite troop and 
supply trains, set fire to war plants, blow 
up ammunition dumps. No mercy is 
shown the invader, and in the controlled 
press regularly appear long lists of Nazis 
who have died under “mysterious” cir¬ 
cumstances or been killed “suddenly in 
the night.” Nazis dare not travel alone 
either in the country or in the streets of 
Warsaw. Warsaw’s Gestapo chief has 
referred to assaults upon his men as 
“bandit raids.” Regardless of what he 
wants to call them, he has admitted that 
hundreds of such raids have taken place. 

In factories making goods for the Ger¬ 
man war machine the work of sabotage 
never ceases. If a man is caught in a 
Warsaw building with a radio, all persons 
in that building are shot. Nevertheless, 
twentv-four hours a dav somewhere in 

J 4 

Poland men are listening to the short- 
wav'e voices of freedom from overseas. 
Taking notes, they swiftly pass the news 
to hidden spots where some 120 under¬ 
ground newspapers are prepared. These 
newspapers fall like snow about the baf¬ 


fled Nazis. They appear everywhere— 
folded so small they are passed on during 
handshakes, slipped under doors, shov-ed 
into Nazi newspapers—and are re^d by 
hundreds of thousands. Underground 
newspapers keep their readers well in 
formed with up-to-the-minute war news 
from all fronts, tell of mounting power 
of the United Nations, point out traitors 
and spies, and maintain faith in the fight 
for freedom. 

In the first months of the occupation, 
thousands of copies of a Manifesto of 
Freedom passed from hand to hand. 
“From the chaos of war there must arise 
a New Europe organized on the princi¬ 
ples of political freedom . . .” it said. 
“Such a Europe is the desire of millions 
of workers, peasants, and intellectuals, as 
well as of soldiers who fight on all fronts. 
Poland, in spite of military defeat, con¬ 
tinues to fight. On Polish lands the peo¬ 
ple carry on a daily heroic struggle 
against the occupants, preparing them¬ 
selves for the moment in which the final 
battle will take place.” Underground 
leaflets instruct the people “to harm the 
oppressor in executing his orders, in in¬ 
dustrial production, everywhere and al¬ 
ways.” Into thousands of homes has 

4 

gone a calendar, printed by the under¬ 
ground and containing anti-Nazi senti¬ 
ments for every month. “Have you sown 
your fields?” reads one caption. “When 
you think of the harvest, think also of 
what you owe Poland—not remnants, nor 
shreds, nor alms, but everything you 
have: your possessions, your children, 
your blood.” Showing the solidarity of 






^^The Nazis planned it that way/^ 


21 





















the people of Warsaw, one underground 
paper is headed “All Men Are Brothers,” 
its cover picturing two hands firmly 
clasped through a gap in the Ghetto wall. 

Instructions from the underground 
spread through Warsaw like wildfire. 
When Goebbels announced to occupied 
lands a few days before Christmas 1941 
that they must turn over all warm cloth¬ 
ing, wools, and furs for the use of Ger¬ 
man soldiers on the Russian front, the 
underground in Warsaw immediately 
issued a leaflet. “Burn your woolen 
clothing, even if you need it, for the 
enemy will take it anyway,” it read. 
“Let the German soldiers freeze to death. 
We shall survive.” On Christmas Eve 
Warsaw was heavy with smoke and with 
the odor of burning wool and fur. Little 
warm clothing was collected. 

The underground has its own means 
of keeping in touch with train move¬ 
ments ; of receiving paper, ink, and 
presses for the never-ending work of the 
secret newspapers; and of obtaining 
caches of arms and ammunition for the 
day of liberation. Arms are not only 
seized from the Germans, but often 
bought directly from the Gestapo itself, 
which has its price, like all organizations 
rotten at the core. 

Joined with the United Nations and 
his comrades from other occupied lands, 
the Polish soldier fights on. The Polish 
Army of 150,000 troops has armored. 


motorized, and parachute units in Scot¬ 
land; it fights in the Near and Middle 
East and in North Africa. It has seen 
action in France, at Narvik and Tobruk. 
One thousand bomber and fighter pilots, 
of the 12,000-man Polish Air Force based 
in Great Britain, drop avenging bombs 

upon the land of the Nazis. 

• • • 

As in Warsaw, the Nazis have failed in 
the rest of Europe. Having nothing but 
contempt for humanity, they based their 
hopes of success upon a fundamental 
error: the belief that men will cower and 
surrender when they have been tortured 
and robbed, deprived of their birthright 
and treated like so many specks of dirt. 
Goldly plotting their conquests, the 
Nazis took into consideration every¬ 
thing except the limitless strength of the 
human spirit. And today in Warsaw 
and throughout Europe the Nazis are at 
war with the human spirit—the spirit of 
decent men crying out for release from 
tyranny and demanding for themselves 
and their children a world of justice and 
of hope. 

On the day Warsaw suffered the heav¬ 
iest bombing of the siege, more people 
were united in marriage than ever before 
in the city’s history. This is the answer 
of Man to the Nazi blueprints of exter¬ 
mination. And Man will survive in 
freedom long after the Nazi madness has 
crumbled in the dust. 



This is a publication about the war. When you 
have finished reading it, please pass it on to 
a neighbor or a friend for further circulation. 


Text and illustrations of Tale of a City may be reproduced without 
permission. The pamphlet was illustrated by a former officer of the 
Polish Army, an eyewitness of the early days of the occupation. 


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